, protecting china's maritime sovereignty interests in the south china sea or its sovereignty interests in the east china sea with japan. interestingly enough, you can also apply new domains, cyberspace missions. so if you look at the how the pla may be taking on some of these historic missions, you can see them in some of the things the pla's been doing over the last few years. the third historic mission has to do with providing powerful strategic support for national development. that might mean protecting the national interests far and abroad from china itself, so being able to protect chinese citizens in countries like africa, so the counterpiracy mission that we saw at the end of 2008 could be a reflection of that mission. and then finally, the last historic mission is to play an important role in safeguarding world peace. sounds like a lot of fluff, but the reality is what's been going on over the last decade, actually longer, being involved in military diplomacy, sending out a hospital ship to do medical diplomacy. so although i'm reluctant to always take at face value things tha